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Parrot Airborne Cargo Review

Parrot Airborne Cargo Review

I bought a couple of really cheap drones for my niece recently – the Parrot Airborne Night and the Parrot Airborne Cargo. In this Parrot Airborne Cargo Review, I’ll tell you everything you need to know about this little drone from Parrot, which is targeted at kids and costs a mere $49. The Airborne Cargo is meant to be flown indoors, but you can fly it outdoors too, as long as there isn’t much of a wind outside. Let’s talk a bit more about this cute little drone.

Design

The Parrot Airborne Cargo is not exactly the toughest drone in the world, but is tough enough – it is, after all, meant for kids and costs very little. It’s not a drone that you repair – it’s one that you use for as long as possible till it breaks down, in which case you get it replaced. The Parrot Airborne Cargo comes with replaceable rotors and can withstand most crashes indoors – but you never know.

Airborne Cargo is available in many attractive colors and uses Lego bricks quite liberally in its construction. While it is made from plastic, it is still quite robust and capable of taking a lot of punishment. It should, because you know how it’s like when kids start flying drones! The rotors come with an extra bumper protection. The Airborne Cargo is quite small and measures just 7.5 x 7 inches, even with bumpers attached and it is about 1.5 inches high. If you take away the bumpers, it measures just 6 x 6 inches.

Flying Experience

I was surprised how easy it was to fly the Airborne Cargo. You can control the mini-drone by using the FreeFlight app on your iPhone or Android. It lifts easily when you click on the takeoff button on the app and hovers at about 3 feet above the floor. You can land it by using the landing button on the app – which does everything needed to ensure that the quadcopter touches down safely. The app does everything for you and allows you to easily control the direction in which you want the mini-drone to go.

Control Modes

The Parrot Airborne Cargo comes with three different control modes – Ace, Normal and Joypad. All three modes consist of virtual joysticks which you can use to maneuver the drones and have different levels of difficulty. I found the Joypad mode to be the easiest to use, so that’s a great way to get a child learning to fly drones for the first time.

The Normal mode is slightly more sophisticated, and I recommend using that once your child picks up some kind of proficiency with the drone. The Ace mode is the toughest of the three and allows you to perhaps complex maneuvers with the Parrot Airborne Cargo such as flips and double flips. I recommend using that when your child has picked up at least a couple of weeks of experience with flying the Parrot Airborne Cargo.

Camera

There’s a tiny little camera that comes with the Airborne Cargo that shoots straight down into the ground from the base of its body. It’s not sophisticated by any means, and is capable of nothing more than a low picture resolution of 640 x 480-pixels. But that’s good enough for kids, who are the Parrot Airborne Cargo’s intended audience.

Battery Life

The Airborne Cargo is powered by a 550-mAh lithium-polymer battery that gives you not more than 10 minutes of flight time. Not bad for a miniature drone, but not the best either.

Parrot Airborne Cargo: Pros and Cons

Pros

Very Cheap, costs just $49.

Great for kids

Attractive design

The FreeFlight app is quite good

Three different landing modes with automatic landing and takeoff

Cons

It’s only for children!

It’s not the most robust drone in the world

It’s not worth repairing it

Low battery life of just under 10 minutes

The camera is very amateurish, and is suitable only for the most basic drone photography

Hope you liked this Parrot Airborne Cargo Review. My niece loves both the Airborne Drones – Cargo and Night and spends a lot of time flying them. If you would like to buy a Parrot Airborne Cargo for your child, please click here to make your order.

I wish you all the best, and remember that if you have any questions or comments you can post them in the comments section at the bottom of any blog post. It’s great to hear from you.

Had no idea that the drones that you could buy at any old eBay site where as sophisticated as they are. I’m not sure if that’s cool or creepy. Like the Amazon ads curious do you have a store or are these links to someone else’s store

Hi Brad, the Parrot Airborne Cargo MiniDrone features a base for attaching items like building blocks and mini figures. It doesn´t come with a figure, you must get one. As to the “little guy” presence, you do not notice any difference in handling the mini drone.

In this particular case you can fly the Parrot Airborne Cargo up to 20/25 meters range.(it works with the bluetooth of your Smartphone/Tablet).